Dick Nakamura: air force photographer

(This article originally appeared in the CAHS Regina chapter newsletter in November 2001)

Dick Nakamura was in high
school in 1939 in Surrey, B.C., when the Second World War broke out and
admits he thought more than a little about joining the RCAF. But before
he got a chance, fate intervened: the "Pacific War" broke out in late
1941 and, as a Canadian of Japanese ancestry, he went from being a
potential recruit to a suspected enemy agent. He and his family were
interned and sent to Alberta, where they sat out the war."The trauma
of being an instant enemy alien is pretty damned tough to take when
you're live here all your life," he told the October meeting of the
Regina chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. Yes,
he admits it embittered him for a while, but with the help of his
father's good advice he overcame it and now can see this experience
changed his life for the better. "I felt I was going to do everything I can on my own to be a Canadian -- as I felt I was -- from then on."
When (at Winston Churchill's behest) Canada later began searching those
internment camps for trustworthy young men who could act as
Japanese-English translators, he was ready to volunteer if the
recruiters ever came his way. And in 1947, he joined the RCAF, being
accepted in 1948 and training at Trenton and considered the aircrew
trade before opting for photography. And he's glad he did, for Dick
says he got "a lot of enjoyment out of photography, not only as work
but as a hobby -- I still love to shoot pictures." It didn't
start out as a love affair, though. After manning depot (where he came
to understand the importance of drill ("in wartime, when they say,
"'Right, 45 degrees! Enemy!', you've got to fire. You've got to do it
right. You can't say. 'Oh, I don't want to!'" he did more training at the RCAF's old Central Photo Establishment at RCAF Station Rockcliffe.
His first assignment was processing and printing the long rolls of
film brought back by RCAF survey aircraft then undertaking the mapping
of northern Canada. It was tedious work and occasionally
frustrating, as when clouds picked up by the cameras required the film
to be underexposed. The "salt mine", it was nicknamed by its inmates. The work was so dull and repetitive that the air force gave little
incentives for those production teams that worked quickly. "There was
no way I was going to stay in that place," Dick said.This rote
work was not why Dick had joined the air force and chosen photography;
he wanted something more creative. "I thought, 'This isn't photography;
this is slave labour'!" His talked with his boss and within about
a month found himself transferred to the public relations and
information section of Air Force headquarters in downtown Ottawa under
a Squadron Leader Walker. His first assignment -- moody, sombre
pictures of a former RCAF senior officer's funeral, exploiting the
cemetery's shadows after almost all the mourners had left -- pleased
his new boss and he was accepted. Suddenly, his life changed for
the better. The prospect of travel, challenging work and interesting
people now arose. "It was a fantastic thing for a single guy; I really
appreciated that."

Among his many projects were the first "Leapfrog" flights, which saw RCAF Sabre
jet fighters flown to Europe via Goose Bay, Greenland, Iceland,
northern Scotland and then south into the London area, from which the
aircraft eventually flew to bases in France and West Germany.Dick
was in one of two RCAF North Stars, loaded with maintenance personnel
and supplies, that literally took turns leapfrogging ahead of the jets.
Patrolling the route were U.S. Air Force B-17 rescue aircraft with
droppable lifeboats mounted under their fuselages, plus a coterie of
naval vessels. A bizarre incident surrounded the flight by the first
squadron, No. 421: the deputy commanding officer had mechanical
problems approaching Goose Bay and barely coaxed his aircraft to a safe landing.
"We thought he was going to go off the end of the runway, but he saved
the plane," Dick recalled. A maintenance crew found tissue paper in his
aircraft'sfuel tank, prompting a thorough inspection of all other
aircraft. It was concluded this was caused by haste in dispatching the
brand new aircraft, not by sabotage."Somebody didn't do their clean-up job," he said.
"They found some loose bolts that jammed up controls at a certain
angle, so they went through them with a fine-tooth comb and fixed
everything."Good thing, too, because in Greenland, the airfield the Sabres used was at the baseof
a mountain at the end of a long fjord. Dick also went on some mercy
missions, getting film of pararescue jumpers ("They never asked me if I
would jump with them!") and took shots of new aircraft -- the CF-100 Canuck interceptor and the first two DH Comet jet
transports, for example -- for public relations purposes.

The latter shot was particularly difficult as the Comet was far faster
than the North Star, its hatches open, carrying Dick and supporting
crew. "They just zoomed right by us. They couldn't slow down and we
were going as fast as we could go."

It took a long chat
between the two crews over coffee at Montreal before they could figure
a way for the Comet to approach, as slowly as safely possible, the
thundering North Star.

Far more time-consuming was
getting a photo of the air force's new C-119 Flying Boxcar transports,
assigned to No. 435 Squadron at Namao. For seven consecutive days, each
morning's weather briefing brought the same news: grey, raining and
cloudy. "I thought, 'Oh, God, I'm going to be here for a month!"
recalled Dick.

Finally, on the eighth day, there
arrived word there was a small patch of clear sky north of Edmonton.
From a Dakota with the cargo door open and everything inside taped
down, Dick spotted the three accompanying '119s forming into what
looked like a huge creature with three wings and fuselages "stuck
together". "At one point, " he said, "It looked like there was a
piggyback." Quick as that, he snapped this picture, illustrating one of
the rules he learned about photography. Film is cheap; take your
opportunities when you get them. "Just one of those things: when something happens and you don't get it, then you've missed it," he said.

In respect of his facility with the Japanese language, he was also
informed he'd be joining the Canadian party for the visit of the Crown
Prince of Japan. He packed and was ready to go when he learned that he'd been replaced. "What do you mean?" "They've found someone prettier," he was told. And
sure enough the RCAF has found an airwoman of Japanese ancestry who was
indeed better-looking, though "this girl never spoke one word," Dick
observed. He learned another lesson when he was assigned, on very
short notice, to cover the visit to Ottawa of Air Marshall Lord
Trenchard, founder of the Royal Air Force 35 years earlier. Speed
was utmost: He grabbed his camera with three exposures remaining in its
magazine and another photographer handed him two fresh magazines,
each with a dozen shots in it. He grabbed some quick shots of Trenchard
inspecting a guard of honour, then put on one of the "full" magazines
and fired away.

The second magazine went through his
camera in equally short order as he snapped "all kinds of shots". Back
in his darkroom, he opened his buddy's two "fresh" magazines and was
horrified to find both were empty. He had violated one of his
cardinal rules: never use anybody else's equipment. Fortunately, from
his own magazine of three shots, he got a fine photo, but it was a close call. "Sometimes," he said, "You gotta be lucky!" Make no mistake about it, the RCAF regarded Trenchard's trip as being
of great historical and symbolic importance. When the distinguished
visitor went to RCAF Station Clinton, Dick was dispatched via train to
document the visit. He got some shots, then boarded a Beech
Expeditor that flew him back to Ottawa, where he raced to his darkroom,
made prints and dispatched them to the Canadian Press wire service
network to be sent across the country. (A note for photo buffs: Dick
used the same bulky, sturdy, easily dismantled, Speed Graphic camera beloved
of generations of newspapers and magazine photographers. "The Cadillac
of cameras," he called it. In cold weather, as at Cambridge Bay, he
learned to keep the battery pack for the flashgun inside his parka and
run a cord to the camera through his sleeve. The camera itself would
have to remain outside during cold weather to avoid being covered with
condensation when taken indoors into warm air.) His most
harrowing experience came on one of his two visits to wartime Korea.
The Canadian Army has an entire infantry brigade, with supporting arms,
there.The RCAF had a number of fighter pilots attached to USAF
units and 426 (Transport) Squadron with North Stars flew Canadian and
American troops from McCord AFB near Seattle north to Anchorage, then
west and south over the Aleutians and over northern Japan and into
airfields near Tokyo.(On their return leg, they would take advantage of
prevailing winds by going from Japan to Wake Island, Hawaii, San
Francisco and then Tacoma, often carrying wounded men in stretchers stacked
up the cabin's ceiling. Dick was aboard the North Star that carried
into Korea RCAF Air Commodore Dwight Ross, the famous officer who had
lost a hand to an exploding bomb while he was rescuing airmen from a
crashed 6 Group bomber in wartime Britain. They got quite close to the
front line, but never right to it because RCAF personnel were barred
from the front lines. Dick tested this rule by stowing away in the back
of a series of Jeeps taking A/C Ross and his party forward, but was
caught and expelled.

Balancing that was the time Dick,
then a lowly aircraftsman, was taken into an American senior officers'
mess in Korea by a flight lieutenant who brashly assured him that
nobody would make out his rank. The boldness worked: Dick found himself
sitting next to a full colonel, who chatted amicably with him,
apparently oblivious to his rank badges. (Culinary note: wherever he went in Korea, ample supplies of fruit salad seemed to be on the menu EVERYWHERE.)

On a more serious note, Dick was dispatched on a North Star -- serial
number 17509, he recalls -- detached from duty in Japan for a
navigational training flight that took it to the Philippines,
Australia, from which it went to Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and back to
Japan, heading onto final approach on a particularly foggy day. No
sweat, thought the crew, as they were being brought in by
ground-control approach (GCA), a system that saw a sensitive,
ground-based radar pick them up on approach, with an operator "talking
them down" to a landing.

So went the theory. Things
proceeded smoothly until the North Star pilot saw something dark flash
past the cockpit. He asked the flight engineer for full power and
pulled up sharply. "We heard sort of a pinging noise and we saw a sort
of a tree going past," Dick remembered. "I thought, 'We're all dead.'" The No. 2 engine had to be shut down and No. 3 throttled back, but
the North Star successfully went around and made another, successful,
GCA approach before landing. So thick was the fog that the North Star's personnel could not see the array of firetrucks and ambulances waiting for them at the far end of the runway. Dick
subsequently learned the North Star's four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines
(unlike those of the similar C-54s of the USAF) were credited with
having the response and power to burst through a row of trees on a hill
and take them to safety.

Upon landing, Dick's role changed from that of a press photographer to that of an
accident photographer. The leading edge of the port wing had a one-foot
dent in it, with pine needles embedded in the landing gear doors. "Good
thing it didn't touch the landing gear," he said. Dutifully, Dick
developed and printed his accident pictures in a little hut in which a USAF fighter pilot, his allotment of flying hours used up, watched him work.

His work finished, Dick was aware of shaking uncontrollably."He
gave me a glass of something and then said, 'The bunk is over there!' I
didn't see anything or hear anything until 7 o'clock the next morning.
I was out like a light. That was a scary part of my experience as a
photographer." After five years in the RCAF, Dick left it
and signed on with another federal government agency, the Prairie Farm
Rehabilitation Administration, in Regina. He joined the army reserve
(militia) unit then known as the Regina Rifle Regiment and rose to be
its deputy commanding officer. After his retirement from the PFRA, he
and his wife moved to Victoria, near to her family in Vancouver.
Again, his knowledge of the Japanese language came in handy: ships of
the Maritime Self-Defence Force, Japan's navy, were visiting Esquimalt
and some sort of procedure for welcoming their crews was needed.
Because he was still on the Canadian Force "SuppList" (supplementary
reserve list) the retired Dick was recalled to duty, put into a navy
uniform. He subsequently received an official commendation for his work
from the JMSDF. An astonishing journey for a young man who had once
been turned down for service in the Canadian Forces fifty-some years
ago. He said that his wartime experience and his father's subsequent
wisdom caused him "to change my whole way of life -- and that was to
prove to myself, on my own, that I was Canadian. That was my whole aim in life. Just for myself."
He took pains in civilian and military life to volunteer for jobs so
that he could never be labeled as "one of those damned guys who was
just sitting down on the job," said Dick, who said that his
parents taught him about obligations to family and country, a sense of
duty and perseverance. He cited one Japanese word that, translated,
means, "It can't be helped." as cooling his anger over internment.

He sees obvious parallels with modern Canadians of Arabic or Islamic
ancestry who are caught in a similar situation today, suspected of
being hostile agents. "Now, my whole effort is to work toward anything
that would not let this happen again in my country."